Re: Proposal for new section: Code Improvements

[Aristotle]

It certainly is a good idea, but I wonder inhowfar the goals differ at all from those of Seekers of Perl Wisdom and/or Meditations? Both of these sections offer a place for this kind of question - SoPW on a different level than Med. My own snippets and idioms I sought advice about went into aforementioned sections. It seemed appropriate to put them there, and they fit right in indeed.

I think the issue is less one of offering a place for such scrutiny, but rather one of encouraging people to seek advice about their code. There is often a lack of awareness with beginners that makes them unlikely to suspect any problems in their code that might make them seek advice; raising awareness is really what we have to achieve.

The questions will follow, and we already have the areas to accomodate them.

Makeshifts last the longest.

[Coruscate]

As I was writing the post, I knew that somebody would mention the fact that SoPW would mold to fit the need of something like this, and I'm not sure why I didn't mention some of the specifics I have been thinking about. The actual posting system would differ from that of SoPW and Meditations. Perhaps a textbox for a title, a textarea for the code, which would automatically wrapped into readmore tags in the output, as well as line numbering being added (as in Craft), so that those who reply to the code can make references to line numbers. Then another textarea where the user describes where improvements could be made, but doesn't know how to go about it. In this way, the person must reflect on which topics the improvements can revolve around. Also, wouldn't it be neat if the rewritten code were to be added to the original post (for example, the original author could click a link saying 'post/edit rewritten code' and edit the code on-site. This would also allow members to see the current progress of the code rewriting as they are modifying it). I'm also thinking about something such as adding the final rewritten code to Code Catacombs, but that would result in the code being in multiple places, as well as harder maintenance on the site.

All of the above would mean actually whipping together some new code, adding a table or two to the databse, etc etc. I'd be willing to (help) do the work, but I'm afraid I don't know anything about the mechanics of the perlmonks code :(

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